Free Money

Free Money explores the impact of providing a modest basic income grant to villagers in rural Kenya, part of an economic experiment facilitated by the organisation Give Direct, which asks the simple question of what happens when we give money directly to people in need, rather than to charities that often provide services of questionable value and which usually take a large percentage of donations to cover their running costs. One of many experiments with universal basic income grants currently taking place around the world, the impact seems to be largely positive, but it’s more complex than that, as this film shows, especially for those who don’t qualify to receive the income. More than a mere document of a social experiment, Free Money is a rich human story that reflects the role that money and wealth plays in all our lives.